


Leave No Stone Unturned

by Lyrstzha



Category: Split Second (1992)
Genre: Alchemy, Astrology, Banter, Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Dystopia, Foster McClaine, Gen, M/M, Michelle McClaine, Occult, Paulsen, Polyfidelity, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Supernatural Elements, Swearing, Thrasher - Freeform, Weirdness, can be read as pre-slash or gen, past Michelle/Foster/Harley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21846001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/pseuds/Lyrstzha
Summary: "It did seem to havesomesort of fixation on Stone that was weirdly...” he paused, shooting Harley a look out of the corner of his eye, “tender,” he finished.“Tender?!” Harley echoed incredulously. “Are youserious?” He gave Dick's shoulder a shove, then promptly grabbed it to steady him when this produced an alarming wobble.“Perhaps that wasn't the best word...” Dick offered.Harley rolled his eyes, but didn't let go. “Youthink?”“Adoring?” Dick offered tentatively. “Infatuated?”Harley gaped at him, and shook him a little for good measure, but still didn't let go. “How is thatbetter?” he demanded.
Relationships: Dick Durkin & Harley Stone, Dick Durkin/Harley Stone
Comments: 8
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Leave No Stone Unturned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Truth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/gifts).



> Truth: I have tried to put this ambiguously between slash and gen, because I could feel it trying to be slashy, but I hesitate to make a gift slashy if I haven't been asked to do so. I hope that's okay. Also, it's nice to know that I'm not the only person in the world not ashamed about loving this crazy movie!

The hospital was unsurprisingly noisy and bright, and nurses kept making Harley put his cigars out no matter how difficult he made himself about it. Plus, they'd taken Dick and Michelle off to separate bays to be patched up, and he couldn't see them anymore with all the closed curtains in the way. Letting either of them out of his sight at this point wasn't really doing Harley's nerves any favors, but demanding that all the curtains be pulled out of the way seemed overbearing and maybe a little invasive, so he would refrain from doing that. At least for the next five minutes, anyway.

It would all be less unnerving if he could still hear Dick babbling, but the constant stream of words drifting from somewhere across the room had fallen silent a couple of minutes before. That particular silence was weirdly, uncomfortably wrong in a way Harley was absolutely resolved never to mention to Dick under any circumstances whatsoever.

But still. “Hey, Oxford,” Harley called out over his shoulder in the general direction he'd last heard Dick's voice. “Ten-foot-tall, armor-plated killing machine got your tongue?” The nurse taking Harley's blood pressure _again_ blinked at him and frowned, but if she was going to keep poking and prodding him like his readings were magically going to drop into a healthy range, she deserved to hear anything disturbing that might come out of his mouth, as far as Harley was concerned.

Immediately, a snort that was definitely Michelle's came from across the room to Harley's right, so that was something.

After a moment, Dick called back, “Now that we've had some quiet time, it's just that I've been thinking...” He trailed off ominously.

“No,” snapped Harley at the same moment as Michelle said “What?”

“ _No_ ,” Harley repeated in Michelle's direction. “Do _not_ encourage him.”

“But if you consider –” Dick tried again.

“No,” Harley repeated vehemently. “No considering! Not tonight.”

Dick appeared around the edge of the curtain shielding Harley's bay. He was loosely draped to the waist in a hospital-issue paper gown that did little to conceal the bandages swathing his chest; he looked half-mummified, and the strip of bare skin at his waist below the bandages looked somehow shockingly vulnerable and pale under the fluorescent lighting. 

“But Harley, it doesn't make sense that –” he started.

Harley pointed an imperious finger at him. “I said _no_. Stop it right the hell now. We _won_.”

Dick's face was painfully earnest, and he took a step further into the bay, almost moving right into Harley's commanding finger. “But it could have – ” 

Harley blew out an explosive sigh and let his outstretched hand turn into a careful pat on Dick's apparently uninjured shoulder instead. “Just let me have this, okay? Just for tonight,” he murmured quietly. “Rain on tomorrow's parade.”

Dick blinked at him, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. A complicated sound came faintly from his throat, like there were words rattling around in there struggling to get out.

But then Michelle's face peered around the opposite curtain. “But it could have _what_?” she demanded.

“Fuck,” muttered Harley, and he pinched the bridge of his nose with his other hand. So much for his victory lap. The nurse, who clearly had a much better sense of self-preservation than Harley did, gathered up her instruments and made her escape.

Dick turned to Michelle at once, and the words in his throat reached escape velocity. “But it could have _killed_ us. Each of us. More than once, and that's just tonight. Why didn't it?”

Michelle frowned. “Oh shit,” she breathed, waving an urgent hand at the bandages covering her shoulder. “When it bit me – ”

“Yes!” Dick exclaimed, waving an urgent hand back at her like they were two air traffic controllers giving conflicting instructions to a particularly confused plane. “Why not bite right through your carotid? Or rip out your heart? It could move fast enough; it certainly had the time.”

“Yes!” Michelle babbled back right over Dick, and now she snatched at one of his waving hands and shook it emphatically. “And why keep me alive when it took me? You'd have come either way, if you didn't know the difference. How distracting would it have been if you'd found me strung up and _also_ bleeding out?”

Harley swallowed down a wave of nausea at the image this conjured, but he figured there was really no point in trying to stop them now. He thought seriously about putting his head between his knees. What a stupid fucking time to be on the wagon.

“Exactly! And why not carve the map sigil thing into my dead body?” Dick gestured to his chest with the hand Michelle wasn't still shaking like a dog with a chew toy. Harley's own hand, still on Dick's shoulder, tightened reflexively. “It would have worked just as well as a message, and that would have left Harley to come after you alone.”

“It's not like he'd've been smart enough to wait for backup,” Michelle agreed readily, as if Harley weren't sitting right there. “Even if anyone would have believed him.”

Surrendering to the inevitable, Harley sighed again as he reclaimed his hand from Dick's shoulder to use both to pull out his chocolate stash and stuff a couple into his mouth. “And what the fuck,” he put in as he chewed quickly, “was up with it groping me on that train?” He stuffed another chocolate in his mouth and absently handed the bag to Dick. “Did you even see that? It petted a hand over my head, slid down my chest – I swear it was going for my crotch. Why not just stab those claws right in? Why take time to get handsy about it?”

“Yes!” They exclaimed together, turning to him. Dick stuffed a handful of chocolate into his own mouth and passed the bag to Michelle.

“That part is especially disturbing when you think about it,” Dick added, somewhat muffled around the chocolate. “Some sort of psychosexual fixation, perhaps.”

Michelle cuffed him on the shoulder. “No Freud,” she demanded, when she had finished chewing, because she had not been raised by wolves as the two of them apparently had. “That shit is ridiculous pseudoscience.”

“Well. I grant you that penis envy is a bit absurd,” Dick allowed judiciously, and she snorted again. “But that aside, it did seem to have _some_ sort of fixation on Stone that was weirdly...” he paused, shooting Harley a look out of the corner of his eye. “Tender,” he finished cautiously.

“ _Tender_?!” Harley echoed incredulously. “Are you _serious_?” He gave Dick's shoulder a shove, then promptly grabbed it to steady him when this produced an alarming wobble.

“Perhaps that wasn't the best word...” Dick offered.

Harley rolled his eyes, but didn't let go. “You _think_?”

“Adoring?” Dick tried tentatively. “Infatuated?”

Harley gaped at him, and shook him a little for good measure, but still didn't let go. “How is that _better_?” he demanded. 

Michelle threw up her hands with a huff. “Fuck whatever we're calling it! Focus!” Startled, they both looked at her obediently. “Why. The Hell. Did it _happen_?” she enunciated very slowly and evenly. “Why did that _thing_ let us live, and why was it especially obsessed with Harley?”

“I have a theory,” Dick said earnestly, because of course he did. “I think it must have absorbed more than Foster's DNA,” he babbled rapidly, obviously excited about his idea. “I think, in some way, it absorbed his emotions for you both. His love. It must have been very confusing to have these suddenly conflicting drives to destroy and nurture. But it would explain so much, wouldn't it?”

Harley went rigid as the air seemed to drain from the room and Michelle turned pale and glassy-eyed. Even Dick, who usually had no sense of such moments, seemed to realize something was amiss; he wobbled a little more under Harley's hand and actually cut off his babble to fall abruptly silent. The seconds ticking by attenuated painfully, excruciatingly weighted. All the bustle in the ER seemed distant and meaninglessly removed from their triangle.

“I have a train to catch,” Michelle finally said softly. She cut her eyes at Harley briefly. “I'll call you,” she offered vaguely. And then she turned on her heel and disappeared beyond the curtain. 

“I didn't mean to upset her,” Dick whispered miserably when she'd gone.

“For a genius, you are _such_ a dumbass,” Harley sighed. But he shifted over a little on the gurney and tugged Dick down to sit next to him. Let whoever was patching Dick up come and find him here if they still needed to; Harley'd had enough of separate bays.

“Did I upset...? Are you also...?” Dick jerked his chin in the direction Michelle had gone.

“Yes. I am also pissed at you,” Harley told him, nodding gravely. “And when you're healed up some, I'll kick your ass for it.”

“That seems fair,” Dick agreed seriously, nodding along too.

“Stop taking all the fun out of it,” Harley groused without much heat, and pretended not to notice Dick leaning against him.

************

Less than an hour later, Thrasher was pacing the hospital's main waiting room when Harley finally lost his last iota of patience and made a break for the exit, Durkin in tow.

“I'm going to pretend I don't know you checked yourselves out against medical advice,” he greeted them.

“I don't remember any medical advice,” Harley claimed innocently. He tried batting his eyelashes. Thrasher raised a witheringly skeptical eyebrow at him. Harley shot a glance over at Dick in a wordless prompt for support.

“We were supposed to check out?” Dick supplied weakly, because he clearly needed more practice at this.

Thrasher rolled his eyes exasperatedly. “Just stop,” he groaned. “You are seriously damaging my plausible deniability.”

“Then we'll just get out of your hair,” Harley offered hopefully, preparing to step around him and drag Dick toward the front door and freedom.

“Hold it right there,” Thrasher insisted firmly, and the door seemed to get further away somehow. “I need you to come down to the morgue with me. We recovered the...body,” he said with an awkward pause. “Right where you said it would be.”

“Then what more do you need from us in the morgue?” Dick asked before Harley could.

“It would be easier to just show you,” Thrasher said in a grim tone that made muscles in Harley's gut clench forebodingly.

************

Harley's gut, as usual, was right. “Foster,” he choked out painfully, hand coming up to cover his mouth when he felt his gorge rising. Dick's fingers rubbed lightly against his back in silent support. What Harley had taken to be simply part of the creature's head must have been some sort of helmet or visor; someone had removed it, leaving the monster's face beneath it visible. Leaving _Foster's face_ visible, surrounded by alien ridges as it was, and no matter how much Harley wanted to close his eyes or look away, he couldn't. “ _No_ ,” he insisted, as if that, or anything else, made sense.

“Let me see the report,” Dick demanded of the medical examiner, stepping assertively between Harley and the corpse and breaking Harley's line of sight. Harley might have thought it was an accident, except Dick glanced back at him and shifted slightly to the right to cut off the view even more completely.

“I need a smoke,” Harley muttered when the spell was broken, and made for the door like a demon was after him. _It was better when it was_ , he thought to himself, half-deliriously.

He was sitting on the roof, ignoring the light drizzle and not actually smoking when Dick came to find him a little later. The concrete under his ass was damp and cold and Harley kept telling himself that the discomfort was distracting. Dick dropped down next to him without saying anything, which was so unexpected and remarkable that Harley frowned at him. Dick avoided his gaze, and that was worse.

“Just tell me,” he insisted, poking Dick's shoulder demandingly.

That earned him sidelong look. “Ah,” Dick temporized.

“I will _shoot you_ ,” Harley gritted out between his teeth.

“Well.” Dick cleared his throat. “I had thought that you'd, ah, recovered, um.” He made a vague gesture that seemed to encompass his own body. “But Thrasher tells me that no one ever actually found Foster, that some of his effects were interred instead.”

Harley swallowed; his throat felt thick and swollen. “Yeah. Right after, for a second, I thought I'd found him, but it was a previous victim. I figured maybe he'd be left at the next site, but then there _wasn't_ a next site for three years.” He narrowed his eyes at Dick. “Why?”

Dick glanced away, his gaze seeming to flit restlessly around as if he were looking for answers in the air. He finally said, “I don't think it _absorbed_ Foster.” He looked at Harley full on then. “I think it _was_...” he said carefully, slowly, giving Harley plenty of time to stop him, which he did.

“You said it was Satan!” Harley yelled accusingly, jabbing a finger toward his chest and redirecting at the last moment to avoid the bandaged area.

“I'm sorry!” Dick threw up his hands entreatingly. “I thought it was! I was in shock, and off my head on caffeine and sugar besides.”

“That's no excuse,” Harley growled, because he was off his head on caffeine and sugar all the time, so he should know.

“I'm sorry,” Dick repeated, sounding satisfyingly wretched about it. His brow was furrowed with concern, and he leaned in a little like he was trying to get a better look at Harley's face in the dim light.

Harley shook his head like a dog coming in from the rain and looked away. After a moment, he said, more evenly, “What makes you think it was him?” He still couldn't say Foster's name, not like this.

“Well, there's obviously...” Dick nodded vaguely in the direction of the morgue, and Harley couldn't quite suppress a flinch. “So there's that,” Dick went on briskly, as if that was going to help. Weirdly, it did. “But also I took another look at that DNA report. I didn't look closely enough before. This, it, ah....” Dick's eyes went wide a second as he fumbled.

“Creature,” Harley gritted out before Dick could find words.

“Creature,” Dick agreed readily with a sigh of relief, and burbled on. “It had the DNA of the victims, as I said before. But it _didn't_ have any DNA from the victims of three years ago. Only the most recent victims. Except for yours and...” Dick swallowed audibly and finished more softly, “Foster's. Sorry. Though I'm not sure how he'd have had yours back at the club.” His hand landed on Harley's back again, and Harley thought that hand was shaking until he realized that he was doing it himself, fine tremors that crawled across his skin and beneath it like creeping claws.

“At the club,” Harley choked out. “I felt something brush by me, maybe a scratching across the back of my neck. But that could have been anything. It doesn't mean it was – it doesn't mean it was that.”

“But, beneath the exoskeletal plating...” Dick's hand rubbed soothingly across Harley's back, and his voice went even softer and more gentle. “When the examiner peeled it back, there was still a tattoo visible on its shoulder underneath.”

“A tower,” Harley murmured, closing his eyes hard. “With a banner that says 'Virtue Mine Honor' around it.”

“Yes,” Dick agreed. “Thrasher said it was his.”

“Crest badge and motto of Clan McClaine.” Harley squeezed his eyes shut even harder, but that did nothing but make Foster's tattooed shoulder too real in his mind. “Fucking Scots,” he said, as if that were a reasonable response.

“I will not take offense to that under the circumstances,” Dick told him gravely, and Harley did not mean to cough out a borderline hysterical laugh at that, but he did. It was followed by another, and he butted his head against Dick's shoulder in retribution as he swallowed them down before they could become something closer to sobs. Dick just kept rubbing his back in a slow rhythm.

“Don't touch me,” Harley grumbled petulantly, but he butted his head against Dick's shoulder again when Dick really did take his hand away. 

“We are not going to tell Michelle about this,” Harley said firmly when he was sure his voice would be steady.

Dick frowned at him. “Are you sure? She has the right to know.”

“This is nothing she needs to know,” Harley declared. “Even if we had something that made _sense_ to tell her. Which we really do not right now. When she's ready to know, she'll call.”

“But if the two of you are going to move forward together –” Dick started to object.

“We're not,” Harley cut him off with finality. “Not like that.”

Dick frowned quizzically. “But you seemed so...” He trailed off and waved a hand expressively, but vaguely.

Harley shrugged uncomfortably. “We were. But it was easier when...” he paused heavily, watching Dick carefully out of the corner of his eye and pretending to find the drowned skyline suddenly fascinating. “When it was the three of us,” he finished tightly. “It's not that there won't always be love there. But there's too much missing now, and we feel that more when we're together.” Uncomfortable with giving so much away, he said the last part so quietly he wasn't even sure Dick would be able to hear it. 

On the edge of his field of vision, Dick's mouth gaped open and his eyes went round. “Oh!” he exclaimed after a moment, in a tone of revelation. “Oh. So when I implied you'd killed your partner...” he pointed back toward the morgue with a wince, and Harley thought about cuffing his shoulder again. “He wasn't just your partner, he was your _partner_. Oh, I – I'm so sorry,” Dick said, somehow even more earnestly than usual.

“Yeah,” Harley agreed gruffly, but he relaxed a little nonetheless. He should've known Dick would take it like that.

Dick scrubbed the drizzling damp out of his face roughly until his cheeks reddened, or maybe that was just embarrassment. It was endearing either way. “I _am _a dumbass,” he concluded miserably.__

____

____

“This is not news to me,” Harley agreed sagely.

“But that's not at all the story I got from Thrasher and Paulsen, you know.”

Harley chuckled mirthlessly. “Believe me, I know. Paulsen spread that shit around, and now everyone accepts it.”

Dick frowned. “I thought he was friends with Foster. Does he not know what really happened?”

Harley shook his head. “Oh, he knows. I know for a fact Foster told him. It didn't come between them, but once Foster was gone and he blamed me for that...” Harley shrugged. “I guess that put things in a different light. Ever since, his interpretation has been that I'm the seducer who sneaked around with Michelle and then dumped her when Foster was gone.”

“You shouldn't let him control the narrative like that,” Dick objected. “It's not fair to you. To any of the three of you, really.”

Harley flicked his hand in a dismissive wave. “I don't really care what the fuck he tells people. Nobody who listens to him is worth talking to anyway.”

Dick nodded decisively and briskly pulled his pad and pen from his pocket. “Never listen...” he said aloud slowly as he jotted down the words, “...to a fucking word..” and he paused while he carefully underlined _fucking_ three times “...that Paulsen says,” he finished, and added a large tickbox next to the note. He shot a glance back up at Harley. “I'll just add that to my station procedures checklist,” he said as he tucked the pad and pen back into his pocket.

Harley's lips twitched. “The thing is, I would actually believe that you have a station procedures checklist,” he snickered, and the corner of Dick's mouth curled up, too. Harley took a moment to breathe, feeling inexplicably lighter, until it hit him. “Wait. _Wait_.” He quickly pulled up a knee so he could turn fully toward Dick and grab his arm urgently. “What you said before, about only having the DNA from the recent victims, plus mine and Foster's.”

“Oh yes!” Dick exclaimed, also turning toward him. “I was going to say, three years ago –”

“That _wasn't him_ ,” they chorused together, hands clasped on each other's shoulders and eyes wide.

“So there was another one...” Harley started, and then they were chiming into each other's thoughts rapidly like they had a single brain between them.

“Another like that, yes, there must have been, and it was the one who was killing before...”

“...when its MO was entirely different, which makes sense now, and when we got close it took Foster but only scratched me...”

“...and did _that_ to him, changed him _somehow_...”

“...only _fuck_ knows how...”

“...over the course of these three years, which might be how long the transmogrification process takes, for some reason.” They stared at each other, panting a little.

“That original creature...demon... _thing_ ,” Harley added after a moment. “What if it's still out there?”

Dick nodded grimly. “And what if it can change others?”

An even more awful thought suddenly occurred to Harley, and his eyes fell in horror to the bandages over Dick's chest. “What if it's a contagious infection?” he breathed, one hand dropping from Dick's shoulder to brush very lightly over the fabric.

Dick's hand squeezed on his left shoulder meaningfully over the long scars that lay there beneath his sleeve. “It can't be that simple,” he pointed out reasonably. “You never changed, and it's been three years for you.”

Harley's eyes flickered up to his face but got drawn back down to the swathes of white over his chest like they were exerting some kind of gravity. “That is not as reassuring as you seem to think it is,” he muttered. “We gotta figure this out.”

“Of course,” Dick agreed immediately. “We will. There must be books I haven't tried yet.”

Well, fuck it, it wasn't his first choice as a plan of action, but needs must as the devil drove. “We're going to need bigger fucking books,” Harley agreed.

************

Thrasher's patience was considerably extended by their explanation of the problem, but as days passed with no further incidents, he insisted that they carry on with other cases as well. Harley and Dick took the books with them, passing them back and forth and arguing over arcane alchemical symbols and astrological conjunctions. And if they had to spend nights hunting the city for anything that made Harley's scars ache, that's what had to happen to get the job done. The ache was probably just paranoia now, but if Harley hadn't come by his fucking paranoia honestly by this point, he didn't know who had.

“I think it's all about _you_ ,” Dick remarked one day, clinging to the dash as they skidded around a corner in hot pursuit of a would-be bank robber. “Born 1972, the year of the water rat. Scorpio.” 

“All that astrology stuff only became part of the signature _after_ it was Foster,” Harley mused, slamming on the brakes and sending up a torrent of water as another police vehicle cut off the way forward and officers leapt out to pull the cornered suspects from the trapped car.

Dick released the dash and flexed his fingers carefully. “Weird to mix Chinese and Western astrology that way anyway, though, and I have frankly had enough of translating sexagenary cycles onto the Gregorian calendar for one lifetime,” he said. “Was Foster into astrology?”

“Not really,” Harley answered, shaking his head. “Not seriously, anyway. He'd read his horoscope for a laugh like anyone else.”

“Huh. So did he learn something important about it from his change? Or was he trying to tell you something?”

“If he wanted to tell me something, he could have just written it out in actual _words_ ,” Harley countered acerbically.

“That's probably true,” Dick allowed. “But that means he thought astrology actually does something, which is not the conclusion I'd come to from any of these books.”

“Well.” Harley looked at the books in the back seat, then back at Dick with a shrug. “You're only human.”

He was not surprised when Dick threw a book at him. It seemed fair, and at least it was a paperback.

************

“Oh, so you two _do_ still work here,” Paulsen taunted Harley when they finally deigned to stop in at the station long enough to file back paperwork. “I had no idea.”

“Somebody has to _work_ here.” Harley bared his teeth in a dangerous facsimile of a grin. “We can't all just loiter around the station with our heads up our asses.”

Paulsen growled and turned to glare at Dick instead. “You'll put in for a new partner, if you know what's good for you,” he sneered. “You don't want his stink coming off on you.”

Dick drew himself up to look down his nose at Paulsen. “I think I can smell where the stink is coming from for myself, thank you,” he replied tartly, casting a significant eye up and down Paulsen. He sidestepped Paulsen to reach his desk, clearly dismissing him.

Paulsen spluttered and grabbed Dick's elbow to spin him back around. “So it's too late for you, is it? Your master's got you trained up into his insanity too,” he hissed at Dick. “Just you remember what happened to his _last_ partner.”

Harley, already bristling the moment Paulsen had laid his filthy paw on Dick, exploded at that with a roar and grabbed Paulsen by the throat. “You. _Do Not_. Talk to him. About Foster,” he spat, shaking Paulsen to punctuate each phrase. “You do not talk to my partner _at all_.”

Paulsen's eyes bulged and he gasped, clawing at Harley's fingers. For a red, ugly moment, Harley didn't let go.

Dick's hand landed atop Harley's gently and tugged lightly. “Harley,” he said mildly, but it was enough to clear the haze.

Harley let go, and let Dick pull him away. He could hear Paulsen gasping for breath behind them as Dick turned him around gently.

“So that's it, is it,” he gasped out roughly, an ugly sneer still under the words. “You _like Dick_ , do you?”

Harley and Dick both paused at the same time. Harley turned back, unhurried. He eyed Paulsen critically. “Well sure, but not _yours_ ,” he countered archly, darkly amused at the confusion on Paulsen's face at his reaction. “Even when I still drank, I was never _that_ drunk.”

“You've got to have standards,” Dick put in brightly at Harley's side. He leaned in close to Paulsen, fixed him with an intent gaze, and dropped his voice as if he were sharing a secret. Harley could hear him just barely; he expected no one further away possibly could. “But that's your trouble, isn't it? They had standards, and you weren't up to them, no matter how hard you tried. They wanted Harley instead.”

Paulsen turned even more purple, his eyes bulged, and his mouth gaped open. Harley couldn't help gaping at Dick in all his vengeful glory, too; he suspected the look on his own face might be just as ridiculous as the one on Paulsen's.

Dick tilted his head slightly, with a detached, clinical air of observation. His soft voice was pitilessly bland and smooth. “Poor Paulsen. They picked him, and not you. It could never have been you. You know that, and that's why you hate him.”

Paulsen reared back with a wordless cry as if Dick had slapped him, jerking back a fist to strike. Dick did not so much as blink or step back, but Harley launched himself at Paulsen's upraised arm. He caught it and twisted it out of the way, shifting his own weight to force Paulsen back against the wall and pin him.

“Stop right there!” Thrasher thundered from his office doorway before the grappling could get bloody. “Keep your hands to yourselves, and not another word out of any of you! Do not make me schedule more fucking team bonding exercises, you arseholes, or so help me, I will use you for target practice!” He glared at Dick. “And I expected _you_ to calm Stone down, not let _him_ make you as feral as he is.”

Harley grinned as ferally as he could, but he loosed his grip and stepped back from Paulsen. If that happened to put him shoulder to shoulder with Dick, well, that was just physics.

Dick looked at Harley beside him, then back at Thrasher. He shrugged. “Sorry, Sir. Sometimes feral is what's called for,” he offered blandly.

Thrasher barked out a sarcastic laugh and rolled his eyes. “That is not what _I_ called for. Remember that!”

“Yessir,” Dick agreed easily, but Harley knew him well enough to see the mulish cast to his jaw behind the placid expression. But Thrasher didn't, apparently, because he glared for another moment and then bustled back into his office, slamming the door behind himself.

Dick grabbed his coffee and made for the door, and Harley followed with one last savage grin at the still-fuming Paulsen. It seemed like a good moment to get back out on patrol anyway, and the paperwork could probably wait. They had more important things to do, and Harley was feeling like treating his partner to lunch for no particular reason.

************

Another evening, far too late, they were holed up in the car again and watching the entrance to the club where Foster had killed his first victim. It seemed a pretty unlikely spot to see anything of value, but they'd added it to the rotation of places to keep an eye on out of desperation more than anything else.

“But why didn't he kill _you_?” Harley finally blurted out, because he'd been chewing it over for days by that point. “Foster didn't even know you. No more than he knew that girl in there.” He gestured at the club in front of them.

“Well, he did try that first time,” Dick pointed out. “With the shotgun and the window. But then...” Dick shrugged.

“Then?” Harley prompted him sharply, not liking the reminder of that incident.

Dick shrugged again. “He might have been watching, after. Or maybe he could feel you, like you could feel him.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Harley bristled a little, even though he wasn't quite sure why. “What are you saying?”

Dick looked out of the window beside him and spoke into the glass with apparent nonchalance. “He didn't have to ask why you hit me either,” was all he said.

Harley could not think of a single damn thing to say to that. He cleared his throat a few times, but it didn't help. After a while, he tried changing the subject, with a wave that generally encompassed the car and the club in front of them, “So, hasn't all this crap gotten in the way of your nightly getting laid?”

“Oh, ah, no.” Dick gave a small, humorless, self-deprecating laugh. “Robin is visiting her sister. For the foreseeable future.”

“Oh, shit,” Harley groaned sympathetically, feeling like a bit of an ass for bringing it up. “I'm sorry to hear it.”

Dick looked down into his lap, his face so shadowed when he did that Harley could only make out the gleam of his eyes and a twist to his mouth that did not look quite like a smile. “She doesn't believe me,” Dick admitted softly. “She wants me to get help. There was an intervention.”

“Shit,” Harley said again feelingly, and slapped a hand lightly against the steering wheel in front of him. “Well. That's understandable; it sounds crazy if you don't see it for yourself.”

“Even if you do,” Dick countered with a tilt of his head.

“Even if you do,” Harley agreed. “But you're not crazy.” He reached out to clasp Dick's shoulder. “You're _not_ ,” he said again firmly.

Dick gave another small laugh, but it sounded a little more real. He reached up to pat Harley's hand on his shoulder. “I'm not crazy by myself, anyway,” he chuckled.

************

One afternoon they were summoned back to the station by Thrasher. Unable to resist, Harley diverted to walk past Paulsen's desk. Dick snorted, but followed him without comment. Paulsen's back was to them, and just as Harley was approaching and opening his mouth to deliver the cutting barb he'd been saving the entire drive in, Thrasher's office door banged open.

“Shut up and get in here,” Thrasher snapped before Harley could say anything, gesturing at his office. “I have something to show you both.”

Dick and Harley exchanged wary glances, which seemed warranted considering the last time Thrasher had said he had something to show them. They filed into his office anyway.

“Perhaps you lads can explain this CCTV footage from a recent murder scene to me,” Thrasher said leadingly, and turned the screen of his computer so they could see it. He pressed play, and a figure walked across the screen and into what looked like an apartment building.

“Isn't that...?” Dick asked incredulously, tapping a finger on the screen.

“Foster,” Harley confirmed gravely. “Shit.” But Thrasher reached over to wordlessly skip forward a few minutes, and it got worse. “And there's _me_ , coming back out covered in blood,” Harley added in disbelief. It was unnerving to see his own face on the feed with someone else behind his eyes.

“It doesn't just _carry_ DNA, Harley,” Dick breathed slowly, eyes wide. “It shapeshifts. It fucking shapeshifts into its victims. _That's_ how it gets around unseen! That makes so much sense.”

“Sense?! It fucking _shapeshifts_ ,” Harley echoed numbly. “Big fucking guns might not be enough for this shit.”

“Shapeshifter? That's what you have for me?” Thrasher demanded.

Dick pointed to the screen. “How else can we explain it?” he insisted. “Even if you thought Detective Stone started going around and murdering random people, you _know_ that can't be Foster.”

Thrasher ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I don't bloody know anything anymore,” he declared glumly. “But I suppose that makes about as much sense as anything those MI-6 bastards who took Foster's body have told me. Which, in case you were wondering, is bugger all.”

Harley blinked rapidly and tried not to think about Foster in a drawer somewhere, dissected down to his bones like a dismantled machine and far away from anyone who'd ever loved him. He'd figured it had gone down that way, of course, but he'd been careful not to ask, and he'd been doing an excellent job of not thinking about it. Dick's shoulder brushed his, just a glancing contact.

Thrasher glared at them as if this entire shitshow was their fault. “How is any of this my life?” he demanded in an aggrieved tone.

Harley grunted derisively. “Imagine how _we_ feel,” he retorted. 

“Enough!” groaned Thrasher, glaring at him, apparently not in the mood for backtalk. “Get out of my station and go be useful,” he ordered. “And I expect to hear a progress report from you two soon!” he yelled as he slammed his office door behind them.

************

“Fuck!” Dick exclaimed on another afternoon during what they called a working lunch, clutching a book in one hand and a cup of noodles in the other and nearly colliding them disastrously together in his distraction. Startled fellow diners stared, but he didn't seem to notice.

“ _What_?” Harley demanded, seizing the cup before disaster struck and putting it back on the table between them.

Dick turned the book in his hand around to show Harley the page he'd been reading. “The symbol for Scorpio, here,” he tapped it with his finger. “In alchemy, it _also_ is used to indicate the process of separation.”

Harley frowned. “The process of separation?” he echoed, peering at the book.

Dick leaned forward across the table eagerly. “ _Separation_ ,” he emphasized. “As in, dividing alloyed things into their pure, component parts,” he said meaningfully, staring hard at Harley.

Harley blinked for a moment, and then the light dawned. “Was he trying to _fix_ himself somehow? Is _that_ what it was all about?”

“It's a working theory!” Dick declared with a fierce grin, and it felt like they were finally getting somewhere.

************

But a week later, Dick declared, just as fiercely, “Or maybe he had no fucking _idea_ what he was doing, and he just threw the whole fucking kitchen sink of the occult at the problem! None of this shit makes sense together. Protection, water, separation, rats, moon, tides... How was he tying it all together?” He threw the book he'd been holding over his shoulder into the back seat of the car with a huff of exasperation.

“We'll get there,” Harley assured him grimly, but it felt like they were getting nowhere after all.

************

As Harley'd expected, Michelle called when she was ready to talk. “Okay,” she said bracingly as soon as he answered the phone. “Hit me.”

Trusting that she wouldn't have asked if she weren't feeling strong enough to hear the answer, Harley told her everything.

“Fuck,” she breathed slowly when he was done. “I should have called earlier. That is so much worse than anything I was imagining. I've got a kid at a delicate stage right now, and the sale of Foster's mom's house is closing on Friday, but I can be down there in a couple of days to help.”

“No, no,” Harley hastened to reassure her. “There's not really anything you could be doing here right now. We're just doing a deep dive into research.”

“I read faster than you do,” Michelle pointed out.

“But you can trawl through occult books from anywhere. You don't need to uproot your life,” he countered. “Dick could give you a list of the rarer ones he hasn't been able to get his hands on, actually. Maybe you'd have better luck.”

“Worth a try,” she agreed. “But I can still come down if you need me, you know. Even if you just need me to not do anything but be there.”

Harley just listened to her breathing across the line for a moment, a comforting, familiar rhythm he'd know anywhere, even if the counterpoint of Foster's breathing wasn't tangled up with it like it should have been. 

“I love you,” he finally said, because he did. “But I'm okay right now,” he said, because, surprisingly, he was.

Michelle gave a small, thoughtful hum. “You know, that's the first time you've told me that in three years that I've believed you.”

“That's because you have a suspicious mind,” Harley teased her.

She snorted ungracefully into the phone. “Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's because you can't be trusted to look after yourself.” She paused, then added more seriously, “I'm glad you have someone looking after you now.”

“It's not...” Harley began, but trailed off. He wasn't sure what he was trying to say, or why he thought he needed to say it.

“I love you, too,” Michelle told him when he faltered. “Foster loved you. No matter what's happened to us, or what he became, that will always be true.”

“No, I know,” Harley agreed, because he'd never doubted it.

“And he'd be glad there's someone looking after you, too,” she added gently.

“I know that too,” Harley murmured, thinking of Foster leaving Dick alive and bound in the back of his car instead of ripped to pieces.

There was another moment of quiet between them, and Harley wondered if Michelle was listening to his own breathing with the same wistfulness as he listened to hers.

Michelle broke the quiet first with a deep, bracing breath. “Okay, I'll stay here for now. But you call me the second you need my help. I'm here for you when you need me.”

“Yeah, I will, “ he promised. “Fuck knows you're better backup than half the force.”

“And don't you forget it,” she said firmly. “I expect a call when shit hits the fan. And meanwhile you text me Dick's number so I can get started on that book list.”

“You just want to check up on me,” Harley accused without bite. “I swear I'll call when there's something you can do here.”

“Well, that's love for you,” Michelle countered vaguely, and he did not need to ask her all the ways she meant it.

************

“I've been thinking,” Dick began seriously one morning as they waited for their coffee order.

Harley, who was only two cups of coffee into the day so far, did not feel ready for anything that tone might mean. He narrowed his eyes forbiddingly at Dick, who seemed completely undeterred.

“Maybe it's like some versions of the vampire myths,” he continued. “In some stories, a bite is all it takes to make someone a vampire. But in others, the vampire has to drink from the victim, and then the victim has to drink from the vampire in turn.” He reached out to accept his cup from the barista with no comment on the vaguely phallic symbol scrawled on the side in place of a name.

Harley snatched his own cup, marked simply with a frowny face, and took a deep, scalding gulp to fortify himself. “Shapeshifting vampires? That's where we're at now?” he rasped against the burn in his throat. 

Dick took a much more moderate sip of his coffee. “That is, indeed, where we're at now.” He turned to hold the door for Harley, and led the way back to the car. “Going by how you didn't change after the clawing three years ago, anyway. If I can assume no fluids were exchanged the other way?” He was on the other side of the car where Harley couldn't see his face clearly by this time, but there was something not quite right about his tone.

“No, and I think I'd remember that,” Harley told him, settling into the driver's seat and putting his cup in the holder. He looked over at Dick, who was doing likewise on the passenger side. “Why is this a theory you're thinking about?” he asked warily, watching Dick's clouded expression closely.

“What about in our final battle?” Dick said instead of answering the question. “There were quite a lot of bodily fluids to go around then, as I recall.”

Harley frowned, trying to remember. “Crap, I don't know. Probably?” He leaned forward a little, trying to catch Dick's eye directly. “Why are you thinking about vampires?” he tried again.

Dick turned to look at the window beside him, where there was really nothing to see but a couple of rats scurrying down an alley. “It just seems like it might be the closest mythic analog,” he said, far too evenly.

“Bullshit,” snapped Harley immediately, knowing it was right down to his bones.

Dick's shoulder twitched a little, but he stayed turned away. “We should really get to the crime scene,” he commented.

“ _Bullshit_ ,” Harley repeated emphatically. He reached out for Dick's arm and grabbed hold. “We are going nowhere until you tell me what this is really about.”

Dick's arm was tense in his hold. “Harley,” he said tightly, but seemed at a loss for anything to add to that.

Harley's gut clenched sickeningly. “I probably did, but did _you_?” he asked urgently.

Dick flinched a little, and his breath hitched just slightly. “I think maybe,” he mumbled softly.

“Are you sure?” Harley demanded.

Dick flicked a glance up at him, then down at his arm, still gripped tightly in Harley's hand on his elbow. He reached down to roll his sleeve back a few inches, exposing his forearm. Harley looked down with a sense of dread, and his gut was right again: the skin there was rough and darkened and faintly scaly, a bit like his cousin Billy's plaque psoriasis. For a long moment, he just stared, the silence in the car heavy.

“I'm not sure,” Dick finally said. “But it got me thinking.”

Harley looked up at Dick's face, then back down at the arm he still held. Without a word, he lunged forward and bit down hard, right in the center of the rough patch.

“Ow! Fuck!” Dick yelped and snatched his arm back. He stared incredulously at the teeth marks, which bled just faintly where Harley had broken the skin. “What the..?”

Harley, still leaning forward, reached out to ruffle Dick's hair with a manic grin, even though Dick swatted at his hand. “It happens to you, it happens to me,” he vowed firmly.

Dick transferred his incredulous stare from his arm to Harley's face. “You are bloody _insane_ ,” he declared. He waved his arm wildly at Harley. “This is maybe the maddest thing you have ever done, and I think we both know how high that bar is!”

Harley's manic grin stretched even further. “Neither of us is going crazy alone, Oxford.”

Dick still stared, but he stopped fending off Harley's petting hand and allowed it to settle on his hair. “It's probably just eczema anyway,” Dick finally said, in a much more subdued voice. “It's probably nothing.”

“So we'll both have eczema,” Harley shrugged nonchalantly.

Dick blinked, then outright giggled at that. “That isn't how eczema works,” he chortled, maybe just a bit punchily. “Atopic dermatitis is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors –”

“Yeah, how about we _don't_ spend the entire drive with you explaining eczema to me,” Harley interrupted, with a gentle parting tug to Dick's hair.

Dick was quiet as Harley started the car and pulled out into the street. After a solid five minutes of this, which was making Harley's shoulders ache with tension at the unnaturalness of it, Dick finally said softly, “That is the nicest, weirdest thing anyone has ever done for me.” 

Harley rolled his shoulders a little in relief. “Anytime, partner,” he said, a little awkwardly; he could feel his cheeks heating. He could feel Dick smiling at him the same way he used to feel the sun on his face when it shone, and there was no conceivable way Dick could ever become a monster. Fuck shapeshifting vampires.

*************

A week after that, punchy from too little sleep and another late night, Dick muttered “When is a chimera a basilisk? When it's turning to stone.” He outright giggled at that, and Harley reaching across the car to smack him on the arm only made him laugh harder.

“Shut _up_ , Oxford,” Harley grumbled at him. “Anyway, that doesn't even make sense. Basilisks turn _other_ creatures to stone.”

Dick squirmed further against the door to make himself harder to reach. “I love that you know that now,” he snickered. “The world may be ending, but at least you're getting a classical education.”

Harley rolled his eyes and hitched himself across the seat far enough to smack Dick's arm again anyway. “And I'm so glad my possible transformation into a monster is something we can laugh about now,” he snarked. “I think we're really evolving as people.”

Dick raised a hand to fend him off, still giggling. “Maybe not as people,” he gasped out, and started laughing harder.

“Shut up, _Dick_ ,” Harley ordered him again. “You're not as funny as you think you are.” But he was laughing, too. Maybe they still weren't getting anywhere, but, in that moment, it felt like they were.

*************

Harley knew he was dreaming, but it felt important anyway. He was running through the wet, darkened streets, chasing a huge, dark monster that was always too fast to see properly. It was just a flicker of claw, a gleam of chitin under a streetlight. The scars on his shoulder burned like fire.

He surfaced abruptly to consciousness with a gasp, aware first that the burning in his scars wasn't just a dream. He blinked, disoriented, and looked around himself. Dick's apartment was quiet around him, tidy and tasteful in a way that always made Harley want to put his feet on the furniture. The couch was soft beneath him, a tattered star chart lay across his lap, and Dick's feet were tucked snugly under his left thigh. He glanced over at where the rest of Dick was slumped bonelessly across the other end of the couch; the man snored softly into a scattering of handwritten notes and diagrams, and he still clutched a calculator in one hand. He frowned in his sleep, and snuffled slightly, like he was waking up.

Harley's next thought was that something was moving in his pocket, and he smacked his hand at it until he realized it was his phone. “Stone,” he barked into it, his voice still rough with sleep.

“There's been another attack,” Thrasher told him without preamble. “Looks like one of yours, if the missing heart is anything to go by.”

“DNA report?” Stone asked, though he figured his shoulder was probably confirmation enough.

“Not yet. They're still gathering evidence at the scene. But I'll put a rush on it.”

“Good. Text me the address; we're on our way.” Stone hung up on him without another word, and turned to find Dick awake and listening.

“It's finally struck again?” Dick asked, sounding entirely awake.

“Think so,” Harley nodded. “We need to get over there before MI-6 or whoever hears about it and all the evidence gets hauled off by assholes in black suits.”

“Right,” Dick agreed. “You think it's the first creature?”

Harley tapped his own shoulder, which still stung a little. “Yeah, but we won't know for sure til the DNA report comes in.”

Dick pulled his feet from beneath Harley's leg and launched himself off of the couch in one smooth movement that showed all the energy of someone who was used to running five miles first thing every morning. “Even if it isn't,” he countered briskly. “If we could _capture_ it...”

Harley sat up straight. “...if we could _question_ it...” he interjected, catching Dick's excitement.

Dick pointed a finger at him and nodded manically. “We might finally have some answers!” 

“Hallelujah!” Harley agreed feelingly.

“Hallelujah.” Dick nodded firmly, and reached down a hand to pull Harley up. “Let's go.”

“But how are we going to capture something like that?” Harley mused as he grabbed his jacket on the way out the door. Dick was already striding toward the stairs with more of that boundless energy.

“I have an idea,” he declared, turning back to wait at the top of the stairs and bouncing a little on his toes. “I'll tell you on the way.”

“Of course you do,” Harley muttered fondly, and found himself grinning a little in spite of everything. They were definitely getting somewhere.


End file.
